The current Vancouver Art gallery, shown in 2010. The VAG will be taking a proposal to the city for a new gallery.Mark van Manen
/ Vancouver Sun

This proposed Pacific Museum near Lost Lagoon was drawn up by architects George Sharp and Charles Thompson during the 1930s. Courtesy: Vancouver Public Library 7899
/ Vancouver Sun

The 1928 Bartholomew Plan included this proposed art deco civic centre at Burrard and Pacific. The Burrard Bridge was the only part of the proposed facility that got built.

Proposed Art Deco civic centre at Burrard and Pacific, 1928. The Burrard Bridge was the only part of it that got built.
/ Vancouver Sun

The Vancouver Art Gallery in 1931 in its original location at 1145 Georgia St.Handout
/ Vancouver Sun

Proposal for a civic auditorium and stadium in Kitsilano, probably dating from the 1920s or 1930s.

An artist’s rendering of a proposed Pacific Museum on Deadman Island off Stanley Park by the architects George Sharp and Charles Thompson, circa 1930s, an example of another proposal for a cultural facility that went nowhere. Courtesy: Vancouver Public Library 7898
/ Vancouver Sun

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In 2007, it looked like Vancouver might get a new art gallery, a new museum, a new maritime museum, a new national aboriginal art gallery, a new national portrait gallery and a new, privately funded waterfront sports stadium.

Then the recession hit in 2008, and none of them got built.

The Vancouver Art Gallery, however, hasn’t given up in its quest for a new home. In February, Vancouver council will consider a request to hand over two acres of Larwill Park at Georgia and Hamilton so the VAG can build a new, 320,000-sq.-ft gallery.

The issue has been the subject of much debate in art circles.

Realtor and art collector Bob Rennie has been critical of the VAG’s plan for an “iconic” building, designed by an international architectural star, which could cost $300 million or more.

Rennie and urban expert David Baxter came up with a 22-page proposal to split the VAG into several buildings, retaining the current location for historical art and building a 50,000-sq.-ft gallery at Larwill Park for contemporary art. The Rennie/Baxter plan has an estimated cost of $150 million.

The VAG sent Rennie’s proposal to Toronto museum expert Barry Lord, who wrote a seven-page report stating Rennie’s plan wasn’t feasible. Rennie then sent out a 21-page rebuttal to Lord’s report.

The issue has become so divisive that several people in the local art community declined to be interviewed about the VAG plan. One said a friend stopped talking to her after she said Rennie’s proposal had some merit.

“Nobody will let you quote anything on this, because it’s so deeply divided,” said heritage expert Don Luxton. “I have a lot of sympathy for council right now, because they’re going to wear it. Council’s going to have to make a decision, and people aren’t going to be happy no matter what they decide.”

The city of Vancouver has reportedly been flying in experts from across the country to talk about the VAG’s proposal. But it is being tight-lipped about it, responding to an interview request with the statement “it is not appropriate for (city) administration to share this research until it has been presented to council for their consideration.”

Oddly, one arts expert who hasn’t been consulted is Rae Ackerman, who recently retired after running Vancouver’s civic theatres for 23 years.

“With modifications, I really like the idea of a new VAG on the Larwill Park site,”Ackerman said from Montreal, where he now lives.

“But not by itself. As I recall the VAG wanted the entire block to build an art gallery on two levels. I never really liked that idea, because I preferred the idea that the VAG would share the site with the proposed concert hall complex, and with retail/commercial.

“But beyond that, what I liked about the idea is that we would have a concentration of cultural facilities, with daytime and nighttime uses on those blocks. The idea that if there was a comprehensive view of the development, something totally exciting and dynamic and unparalleled in Vancouver could come out of it.”

Who would pay for it is another question.

Ackerman laughed when asked if he thought the provincial and federal governments would chip in $100 million apiece to fund a new Vancouver art gallery.

“In a sane world the provincial government would be taking a much bigger hand in this stuff than it ever has,” he said. “And if they do, the federal government can participate.

“That’s always been the problem in Vancouver and B.C. If the province doesn’t participate, the federal government can’t.”

It took Ackerman 15 years to convince the city to go ahead with a $60-million renovation of the Queen Elizabeth and Orpheum theatres. The federal government contributed $2.7 million to the project, but the province didn’t contribute a cent.

“The city was on its own, totally,” said Ackerman. “B.C. is the lowest per-capita contribution from the provincial government for the arts in all of Canada. There’s no one lower and, historically, never has been anyone lower. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island contribute more per capita than the B.C. government.”

Still, proponents of the VAG plan think the federal government might be inclined to spend money on a new gallery as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017.

But that’s not a given. The federal government spent $62 billion on its much-hyped “Economic Action Plan” during the recent recession, but the Finance Department reports that only $60 million went to cultural facilities such as art galleries, theatres and museums. That is slightly less than one per cent.

Heritage minister James Moore was unavailable for comment, but his press secretary, Sébastien Gariépy, said by email “we have not been presented with any official proposal for a new Vancouver Art Gallery, but a new $300-million project is not something our government can afford at this time.”

Historically, there have been all sorts of grand plans for cultural facilities in Vancouver, but few were ever built.

In the 1930s, architects George Sharp and Charles Thompson drew up plans for elegant art deco museums at Lost Lagoon and on Deadman’s Island. Sharp and Thompson also designed a beautiful sports stadium and auditorium at Vanier Park.

The 1928 Bartholomew Plan included a dazzling civic centre at Burrard and Pacific (the Burrard Bridge was the only part of the plan that was built). In 1949, alderman George Thompson proposed another civic centre that would have stretched from Burrard to Stanley Park along Georgia.

“There was another civic centre, which would have included an art gallery, a museum, city hall and all that stuff going back to 1914, from Victory Square (at Pender and Cambie) up to Georgia Street,” said Luxton.

“The (Great Northern) train station, to the north of Pacific Central station, was offered to the city as a museum in the ’60s and they turned it down. That was stupid, that would have been quite something. But the building got torn down.”

Why was it so hard to get anything built? Luxton feels it’s the boom and bust nature of Vancouver’s economy.

“By the time you get the idea happening, the economy crashes and you don’t have the money to do it, or the circumstances aren’t right,” he said.

Sharp and Thompson designed the first Vancouver Art Gallery, at 1145 West Georgia, in 1931. The lovely deco building cost a mere $50,000. It was expanded in 1951 for $350,000, when the deco facade was replaced with a bland 1950s look.

When the provincial courthouse moved into Arthur Erickson’s Robson Square complex in the late 1970s, Erickson redesigned the 1912 courthouse into the current gallery. After a $16.8-million renovation, the gallery opened in the fall of 1983.

The Vancouver Museum was the city’s major cultural facility for much of Vancouver’s life, but the VAG left it in the dust when it moved to the courthouse. Tens of thousands of people pass through the VAG every day on Robson Street; it is arguably the best location in the city.

But the old courthouse doesn’t offer the type of big open spaces that are in vogue in contemporary art, or enough room to showcase VAG’s collection.

In 2004, the VAG quietly asked Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan to come up with some designs to expand on the current site.

Maltzan’s “over” Robson Street scheme featured a long, low building that stretched from the current building across the street into Robson Square.

His “across” proposal looked at taking over the western side of the Sears store at Howe and Robson.

A third was labelled “behind,” and would have seen three low-slung structures.

The city didn’t like any of them.

“It would have defaced the Arthur Erickson design of Robson Square, which we felt is a beloved Vancouver heritage landmark and one of the most important buildings of its time in Canada,” said Larry Beasley, who was Vancouver’s director of planning at the time.

So the VAG went looking for a new site.

In 2007, it announced it wanted to build on Larwill Park, a former sports field that had been leased out as a bus depot from the 1940s until 1994.

In 2008, premier Gordon Campbell came out of left field with a plan to renovate BC Place Stadium after the Olympics. Part of his scheme involved building a new VAG just east of BC Place, on the shore of north False Creek. He also offered the VAG $50 million to help build it.

BC Place was renovated for more than half a billion dollars, but the False Creek VAG never worked out and the gallery went back to the city to ask for Larwill Park.

But there are other proposals for the site, including office towers, a 1,950-seat concert hall and a 450-seat theatre. The live venues are the remnants of the Coal Harbour Arts Complex, which was supposed to be built on the site of the new convention centre. Architect Bing Thom has also proposed an alternative space for the concert hall under the Georgia Street lawn of the current VAG.

It’s a rather complicated situation. If the city does give the go-ahead to the VAG, it will probably have to raise more than $100 million from private sources. That, Rennie argued, would hurt fundraising by other cultural groups.

“He’s right about that,” said Norman Young, the former chair of civic theatres and the B.C. Arts Council.

“All of the people who don’t know anything about art or music or theatre, etc., would want to dump their money into the big thing, they’d want to put it in there. The symphony has its supporters, but even some of those, I bet, would drift away. Everything else would suffer if all that money was put into that one thing.”

Young feels the best place for the art gallery is the downtown Vancouver post office. But then, he thought they should have put the main branch of the Vancouver library there, too.

“When they had the vote (at council) on the new library, 50 people spoke for it and Norm Young spoke against it,” he notes with a laugh.

“I went as chairman of the theatre board. My suggestion to council was that they take that building and make it into a (civic complex) ... bring the museum in there, the archives. The building has 50-foot spans. The engineering of the building is such that in breaking it up you can get great spaces and small spaces and everything else.”

When I bring up the fact the gallery wants a world-class building, he laughs.

“Listen, this city was world class 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago,” he said. “We just never told anybody about it. This idea of telling the world we’re world class is a real piss off — people are coming here!”

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